Why and how to use Wikipedia for science communication

Wikipedia as a resource for all
Wikipedia is a free online, multilingual encyclopedia that is created and edited by volunteers around the world. It is fast becoming the first stop shop for information for the global public when seeking online answers to questions and problems. With total monthly page views in excess of 20 Billion, and as one of the top 10 most visited websites in the world, Wikipedia can be used to communicate information to a much wider and more diverse audience than can be achieved through any other platform.
Various quality assurance measures, a focus on robust citation of facts, and a peer community of article editors means that Wikipedia articles are trusted more and more. Subject matter experts play a particularly important role here through their ability to assess accuracy and contribute to the completeness and comprehensiveness of Wikipedia articles.
About this page
This weADAPT page aims to pull together numerous resources that will help you start your journey as a Wikipedia editor. It has been designed as a resource for attendees of a special event at the International Mountain Conference 2022 but will be useful for anyone interested in using Wikipedia for enhancing science communication. It draws heavily on the experience of and resources generated by CDKN (including their guide on contributing to Wikipedia) and the Communication of environment SDGs project led by SEI.
This is a living resource! We will continue to add further resources to this page, alongside next steps for a community of editors focused on sharing relevant knowledge on mountains and mountain systems.
Resources
Presentation: Why and how to use Wikipedia for science communication
This presentation, which was given for a special sessionat the International Mountain Conference in Innsbruck in September 2022, provides background on why and how researchers should and can use Wikipedia for communicating science. It includes walk throughs of how to make basic edits, from editing text and adding citations to connecting pages. It also contains information on ways to engage with other Wikipedia editors and why to do this.
Download these slides here: IMC2022_Wikipedia for Science_for weADAPT
Training videos for aspiring Wikipedia editors
This playlist of Wikipedia editing tutorial videos,presented by expert Wikimedian Elisabeth von Muench, explains the basics of Wikipedia editing. It aimed to train workshop demonstrators so that they could train others.
The training videos include:
- Quality assurance, watchlists, reviewing new edits
- Quality of existing articles, the lead, article history, page stats
- How to edit, uploading images to Wikimedia Commons, using excerpts
- Why and how to interact with other editors on Wikipedia, talk pages
- Creating new Wikipedia articles (pros and cons), using redirects
Useful links
- Wikipedia Help Pages
- Wikipedia has a large array of hep pages aimed at answering all your questions about Wikipedia and helping you become a Wikipedia editor. These page can be browsed and searched from the Help:Contents page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:Contents
- Tip: You can quickly search and jump to help pages in Wikipedia’s search bar by typing “help: “. This will automatically bring up a list as you type.
- List of do’s and don’ts for Wikipedia editing [from the SDGs edit-a-thon, 2020]
Guidance publications and webinars
- CDKN’S “How to contribute climate change information to Wikipedia: A guide for researchers, practitioners and communicators” includes a webinar and provides comprehensive guidance on becoming a Wikipedia editor, from why Wikipedia is an important tool to communicate climate change information and why researchers and specialists should use Wikipedia to boost the impact of their work, to step-by-step guidance on how to get started with editing and creating articles, getting involved with the Wikipedia editing community and organising your own online or face-to-face Wikipedia ‘edit-a-thon’.